It was a truism that all civilizations were basically neurotic until they made contact with everybody else and found their place within the ever-changing meta-civilisation of other beings, because, until then, during the stage when they honestly believed they might be entirely alone in existence, all solo societies were possessed of both an inflated sense of their own importance and a kind of existential terror at the sheer scale and apparent emptiness of the universe.

I think I might have overdone it with the partials in previous weeks, my entire body seems to protest as soon as I get under the bar. Hit around three more reps with the 405 but they were not deep enough.

Monday, March 28, 2011

My bench press has definitely stalled. I used to get 4-6 reps with this weight before, so it is in fact going down (the two reps I got in today were not done with the best form either). So I will be switching over to an Ed Coan-inspired bench routine for the next 13 weeks to see if I can kick-start some progress. I will be keeping the bottom-position bench press in the new program.

To be honest, I have lost over 10 lbs. since my benching glory days when I put up 353 lbs. (160 kgs) in December. I have often read that weight loss affects one's pressing, but I didn't know it was this dramatic.

I am also looking forward to starting a new program. The 5/3/1 has done a lot for all my lifts and it is definitely something I'll stick with in the long term, but 18 months is long enough. If I manage to make progress on the Coan bench routine I will go back to 5/3/1 for the bench press for a while.

Other lifts will still be trained using the 5/3/1 template, as they are progressing nicely.

Bottom-position bench press:

195 lbs. x 5
225 lbs. x 3
250 lbs. x 4 reps (this, on the other hand, felt so easy I had to re-check if I'd misloaded the bar)

Rack presses - did not feel like doing super-heavy lockouts, so I did presses from the sticking point instead. Worked up to 305 lbs. x 1, which was a pleasant surprise, having in mind my sub-par bench pressing earlier.

Chinups 7 sets x 5 (did these instead of pullups as I don't use this variation much)

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

I generally avoid nutritional discussion, but I got some major inspiration from the wisdom of Jim Wendler this morning:

"(On kitchen utensils) First of all, you don't need pots and pans. You need a pot and a pan. The pan is to cook (many) grilled cheese sandwiches. Grilled cheese fucking rules and should be eaten three to four times a day as I've found a direct correlation between being awesome and the uninhibited consumption of grilled cheese.

As for the pot, you need that to cook and sterilize your Fina. That should be a given.

So make sure you have a pan big enough to cook 2-3 grilled cheese at once and a pot big enough to house a massive bottle of Fina."

I'll take a pass on the Fina, but the grilled cheese sounded right on the money this morning. So I had two sandwiches. As for the pot, use it to cook stews, curries and even whole chickens.

How to make grilled cheese in a pan (for the cooking impaired):

Step 1: Take two slices of bread per sandwich.

Step 2: Butter two slices of bread per sandwich.

Step 3: Slice enough cheese.

Step 4: Find a pan. If making more than one sandwich, make sure the slices can fit into the pan with room to spare, otherwise they will not cook properly.

Step 5: Heat the pan.

Step 6: Place slice(s) of bread, buttered side down, into the pan. Place cheese on top of (unbuttered) side of the slice. Place the other slice atop the cheese so that the buttered side is on top.

Step 7: Grill for about a minute and a half, or until frying side is brown and crispy.

Step 8: Flip sandwich over and grill until other buttered side is brown and crispy. Be careful, it will brown much more quickly than the first slice.